The second lesson Tip absorbed was the result of a scolding he received the day before the election from a certain Mrs. Elizabeth O’Brien, who lived across the street from the O’Neills and was far from satisfied with the way the “Governor’s boy” had comported himself during the campaign. She explained she was going to vote for him even though he’d never personally come to her seeking support. “Tom, let me tell you something: people like to be asked,” she informed him, surprised, as his father had been, at his ignorance. Happily, Tip was a quick learner and didn’t need to hear either of these adages a second time.
In 1934 Tip was given a thrilling opportunity, one offered for purely local reasons. Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, who’d grown up not far from the O’Neill family and knew them, had been private secretary to Franklin Roosevelt since 1920. A year after she’d gone to work for the then—and ultimately unsuccessful—vice presidential candidate, FDR suffered the polio attack that left him paralyzed, unable to walk.
Despite this enormous handicap, he achieved what can only be called an extraordinary political comeback over the next decade, even though his enemies and rivals had regarded him as definitively sidelined. In 1932 Roosevelt ran for the presidency and won. Now Tip, thanks to Miss LeHand, who knew of the young man’s political interests and ambitions, and that he’d campaigned for FDR as he had for Al Smith, found himself invited to Washington to meet her boss. When he got to the White House and was ushered into his hero’s presence, he was stunned to see him seated in a wheelchair. “I was so shocked that my chin just about hit my chest,” he later wrote.
Tip felt honor-bound to keep the president’s secret. It was an early political confidence, of the highest order, but Tip perceived it also as a matter of personal respect on his part. The meeting, along with the trust the president had placed in him, left an indelible impression and contributed significantly to the formation of his ongoing political loyalties.
In 1936, having absorbed the earlier lessons of defeat, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., was elected to the Massachusetts state legislature. He was twenty-three and, already at that early age, in exactly the place he was meant to be. That he entered politics and would make his life there certainly came as no surprise to one of the nuns who’d once taught him. She later told an interviewer: “Tom was never much of a student. But he was always popular and a leader even then. He led the boys’ debating team and always won. Tom could talk you deaf, dumb and blind.”
From the beginning, Tip based his political service on the primary needs of the citizens around him, whose lives he understood. Better still, he understood the dignity of those lives, and believed in that dignity. As a result, jobs, for him, were an all-important factor of the human equation, and, as such, the responsibility of an elected public servant. There was never any question in his mind that government could—and should—put people to work. He’d seen the connection between the two clearly ever since he’d spotted his first snow button. Winter created the jobs: government made sure the right people got them.
Starting in the 1920s and 1930s, New England was increasingly losing ground when it came to holding on to large-scale employers. The once widespread and prosperous regional textile industry had moved to cheaper territory below the Mason-Dixon Line, followed there by the shoe factories. A campaign slogan of “work and wages” was incentive enough to compel worried voters to back any Democratic candidate promising them. Yet Tip O’Neill, the freshman state representative from Cambridge, as concerned about jobs as he possibly could be, was also now revealing a concern for issues beyond the parochial ones that had guided him there in the first place.
One of these new concerns he now weighed in on was the importance of fighting any encroachment against our civil liberties. In his first months at the State House, young O’Neill made his name—for better or worse, you’d have to say—by siding with those casting votes to repeal a law mandating a loyalty oath for teachers. A politician taking this side of the argument would be seen in some precincts merely as an alert civil libertarian, while in others such a suspect position would not only elicit scorn but also likely draw the all-purpose epithet communist. Confident of the rightness of his position, however, Tip was willing to suffer the townie contempt at the same time as he earned the approval of his old nemeses, the Harvard Square types. At the next election, he won by an even larger margin.
In 1941, Tip married Mildred Ann Miller, a Somerville girl and high school classmate whose father was a streetcar operator, and whisked his bride off to New York for their honeymoon. He’d timed the wedding to occur on a particular weekday, one he considered special but for reasons having nothing to do with connubial love and everything to do with what was happening in New York the very next night. Tip would take his new wife of just twenty-four hours to the Polo Grounds to see Billy Conn fight Joe Louis in front of a crowd of fifty-four thousand people, a contest that’s now the stuff of legend. In the thirteenth round, “The Pittsburgh Kid” had the champion on points, but then foolishly went for a knockout. It was he who got kayoed, instead. Afterward Conn famously quipped to a reporter, “What’s the use of being Irish if you can’t be thick?” Resuming their honeymoon, Tip and Millie headed the next day for Atlantic City.
Over the next five years Tip worked earnestly at his job, making his way up the Democratic ladder in the state legislature, storing up credit in the party as he did so. The universe in which he labored each day was an orderly one, with set rules, based on a code of behavior understood and agreed upon by all: you served your time in lower offices, worked your way “through the chairs” to head up a committee, knowing that you could, if fortune looked favorably, rise beyond the normal ranks to a privileged position such as a seat in the U.S. Congress. Still, everyone realized that such rewards could never come your way until you’d “worked your way up through the vineyards.”
Then, in 1946, the year after World War II had ended, a wild card suddenly appeared on the horizon, changing the political game not just for Cambridge but eventually for Massachusetts as well. And, later, the country, too. This newcomer knew little of how Tip O’Neill’s world was supposed to work and certainly had never heard of—nor was in need of—a snow button. What he possessed was a dazzlingly heroic war record and a father, one of the richest men in the country, anxious to sell it to the voters. If he didn’t fit in politically, well, that was a truth he was aware of from the get-go. Jack Kennedy understood better than anyone to what extent he came on the scene as a carpetbagger. “I had never lived very much in the district,” he dictated into a tape recorder fifteen years later, in what appears to have been the beginnings of a memoir, “. . . and on top of that I had gone to Harvard, not a particularly popular institution at that time in the 11th Congressional District.”
In the way such matters normally were taken care of, Tip had the seat earmarked for a pal of his, another Cambridge street-corner guy, Mike Neville. He, like Tip, was a wait-your-turn good soldier—and, now, his time seemingly had come. Neville looked to be a shoo-in, especially once the experienced pols had taken a good look at the new kid on the block. “By the time I met Jack Kennedy, I couldn’t believe this skinny, pasty-looking kid was a candidate for anything,” Tip remembered thinking, and so had simply dismissed the Kennedy scion’s chances.
By this time a skilled veteran of the Massachusetts political wars, with a good sense of what would play on his home turf and what wouldn’t, he simply didn’t, or couldn’t, see the obvious: that is, the pure magic of John F. Kennedy. Instead, he put his belief in the system he knew, ignoring the evidence of change squarely facing him. In fact, the opinion of other observers, then and now, has held that the handsome, charming young Kennedy could have beaten Mike Neville even without all the money his father spent to ensure his triumph.
The sweeping Kennedy victory, however, did nothing to interfere with O’Neill’s own ambitions. In 1948, Tip saw the potential for a Massachusetts-wide canvass to recruit young war heroes and other attractive vete
rans to run for the state legislature and, recognizing this, he organized the effort, which was successful. It made for an historic coup, with the Democrats achieving a majority of seats and Tip himself elected, at the age of thirty-seven, as the first Democratic and first Roman Catholic Speaker in the history of the commonwealth.
Four years later, in 1952, with Kennedy claiming his right to move up to the U.S. Senate—he would defeat the Republican incumbent, the effortlessly upper-class Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.—Tip O’Neill himself had ambitions for the House seat vacated by Jack, which he won after a tough primary fight. For decades afterward he would publicly pay glowing tribute to the man he’d succeeded, even though, privately, he was slow to admire the younger man’s political skills. The truth was, he had little choice, given the Kennedy family’s influence in both Boston and the state, and so could only bridle at the role he found himself forced to play, not being entirely his own man and having to do their bidding as needed. He would spend decades regretting the slighting words the Kennedys had given him to say about the much-respected Lodge in an election-eve radio broadcast. And to add insult to that indignity, even after he’d done their dirty work, he heard from trustworthy sources that Bobby Kennedy, one of the two younger brothers, was considering a run against him, looking at Jack’s onetime seat as family property. Furious, Tip promised Jack that if his kid brother decided to pursue such a challenge it would be “the dirtiest campaign you ever saw.”
Jack Kennedy did do one favor for Tip. It came as a piece of cagey advice. In early 1953, just as the country was getting used to calling General Dwight D. Eisenhower “President,” and he himself was moving across Capitol Hill to his Senate office, Kennedy told O’Neill, now a member of the House freshman class, to “be nice to John McCormack.” McCormack had been second only to Sam Rayburn in the Democratic leadership since before the war. Clear to him were Tip’s institutional ambitions. Jack figured that once Tip found his footing and acclimated himself to the House, ingratiating himself with McCormack, who’d been elected from Massachusetts to the House of Representatives in 1928, was the surest route for O’Neill to reach leadership himself.
Tip soon became a dedicated member of what was known on Capitol Hill as the “Tuesday to Thursday club.” Though it was a tiring commute, it was the option he, along with a group of colleagues from Massachusetts, chose. They’d carpool down to the capital on Mondays, returning on Thursday evenings. Only rarely would he ever spend four entire weekdays in Washington, preferring instead to enjoy as much time at home with his family as could be managed. To make up for his regular absences, Tip would make breakfast and school lunches for the kids—he and Millie had five children: two daughters and three sons—on Friday and Monday so that Millie could sleep later.
During his Capitol Hill working days O’Neill led a bachelor’s existence, rooming with another freshman member of the Massachusetts delegation, Edward Boland from Springfield. They were a definite odd couple: the short, quiet Boland, the large, ebullient O’Neill. The only things the two men kept in their apartment refrigerator were orange juice—which Boland would hand-squeeze—diet soda, beer, and cigars. For Tip, the evening ritual was dinner out, usually followed by late-night card games. On one evening he’d meet his pals at the University Club, on another at the Army-Navy.
All this time, O’Neill was counting the cards, and not just there on the table. He never stopped making friends—in both parties—recognizing the importance of keeping track of who was where and knowing how to connect the dots. That way, he’d have the high cards and the flushes when he needed them. “Incidentally, I’m absolutely convinced,” he would say, “that one of the secrets behind my eventual rise to power is that I ate in restaurants every night with my friends and colleagues from the House.” Hanging out in just the way he so skillfully—and genuinely—did over the years forged many a friendship, including across-the-aisle loyalties. These last came in particularly handy whenever a fellow member found himself in a situation where his ethics were being called into question. “I don’t want to see any man go to jail,” Tip would say.
The practical results of his tireless networking, and also the lasting bonds he forged, formed the plus side of the lifestyle adopted by Tip in Washington. But there was a negative aspect, too: the pastimes he favored meant that his regular intake of rich food, alcohol, and cigar smoke, plus the late nights, continually offered a very real threat to Tip’s weight and overall health. It wasn’t hard to see. Yet, as he would point out, there were just three ways to spend those Tuesday-to-Thursdays: either drinking, chasing women, or playing cards. “Some fellas like women. Some fellas like booze. Other fellas like cards. Cards keep you out of trouble.” He’d made his choice and stuck with it, and it gave him a bon vivant’s view of the city. “Many a morning I’ve seen that flag flying up there at dawn,” he once told me as we drove up Independence Avenue with the Capitol in full view.
One fellow with whom Tip had occasionally played cards was Vice President Richard Nixon. “Not a bad guy,” he’d say to me years later. In his 1987 memoir, Man of the House, he described Nixon as “bright and gregarious.” The only problem with him, according to Tip, was that Nixon talked too much during the poker games. Still, they were amicable enough that Nixon felt able to ask the Democrat for help during the 1960 presidential race. One week he passed on word to Tip that he hoped he might meet him at the game early so they could talk. When O’Neill obliged, Nixon made his pitch. Jack Kennedy, he said, wasn’t going to make it through the primaries; Lyndon Johnson was sure to be the Democratic candidate. Therefore, he felt it was all right if he asked O’Neill for the name of a young gung ho campaign operative. O’Neill, agreeing that this was fair, came up with one recommendation, who happened to be Senator Leverett Saltonstall’s administrative assistant. His name: Charles Colson, later a key figure in the Watergate scandal.
Besides running for and winning reelection every two years, thus amassing seniority as the 1950s turned into the 1960s, O’Neill was able to use that institutional advantage for the folks back home. From his position on the Rules Committee, and later in the House leadership, along with his close friendship with Eddie Boland and Silvio Conte, also from Massachusetts, on the Appropriations Committee, O’Neill played a central role in Boston’s latter-day economic development. He won federal money for Boston College and other universities, for medical research for the Massachusetts General Hospital, for new transit systems like the Silver Line in the Seaport district, and, finally, for the greatest public works project of them all, the Central Artery, best known as the “Big Dig.”
Tip’s political tactics, seasoned by years of effectiveness, were frequently of the hardball sort. When he needed to be tough, he never hesitated to hit, and hit where it hurt. His formidability showed itself most memorably in late 1963, just after Jack Kennedy’s funeral, when President Lyndon Johnson announced he was closing the Boston Navy Yard, not only one of the region’s most significant employers but also a symbolic one. The larger-than-life Texan in the White House, himself no political sissy and a man whose wrath (and revenge) was always to be feared, then went even further, adding insult to the injury. At the behest of top aide Joe Califano, an alumnus, he agreed to give the commencement address that year at Holy Cross rather than at Tip’s alma mater, Boston College—completely ignoring the Speaker’s invitation several months earlier—and this was, for certain, a swipe too many. Only when O’Neill used his position on the Rules Committee to keep the vital Johnson bills from reaching the House floor did the angry president, boxed in and not liking it one bit, finally relent. The Navy Yard remained open.
However, with his stance on the increasingly polarizing issue of the Vietnam War O’Neill offered his boldest challenge to the Johnson White House. Tip’s children, especially Susan—all of them of the generation opposing continued U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia—had helped turn him around. It was because he listened to his kids that he was able to listen to the war’s critics, and not just t
he Pentagon. While it won him admirers among the Harvard crowd—in much the same way his rejection of teacher loyalty oaths had two decades earlier—his position on Vietnam brought a very different reaction at home in North Cambridge. In a neighborhood where enlisting in the U.S. Marines or other armed forces was the patriotic alternative to going to college, Tip’s position was a betrayal. There were those, even, who took it personally and despised him for it. With young townies dying each day in that far-off, unknown place on the other side of the world, he had broken faith with the faithful, even as he kept it with himself.
Though his opposition to the Vietnam War caused pain at home, the same moment was, in Washington, a juncture in Tip’s career when the possibility of the Speakership first started to be tangible. There were several political incidents—you could even call them “accidents”—that contributed to this. The first occurred at the raucous, unforgettable Democratic National Convention of 1968. With antiwar demonstrators massed in the Chicago streets and turmoil in the convention hall itself, President Johnson, watching on television at his Texas ranch and getting angrier by the minute, managed to reach Chicago congressman and fellow Democrat Dan Rostenkowski by phone on the convention platform. With all the force of his considerable personality, not to mention his presidential authority, Johnson ordered him sternly to get things under control, pronto. “Take the gavel. Get some order in the hall,” he demanded.
Rosty, as he was known, went to work. Grabbing the microphone from the convention chairman, House majority leader Carl Albert, he managed to restore order. Unfortunately for Rosty, the diminutive Albert never forgot what the burly Chicagoan had done to him. Especially once he got wind that Rostenkowski was dining out on the story of how he’d physically wrested control from him, making sure that anyone who’d somehow missed it knew of this affront to Carl Albert’s dignity in full view of millions of people.
Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked Page 10
